Ijewere speaks on how to bring down food prices

Mr. Emmanuel Ijewere, Chairman, Best Foods Group is one of Nigeria’s most eminent businessmen with extensive experience and interests across the banking, finance and agricultural spectrums.

His national assignments have included chairmanships of the Agriculture and Food Security Commission and the Modified Value Added Tax Committee. He was a member of Agricultural Transformation Implementation Council (ATIC) under past President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan's chairmanship. He served as resource person on agriculture to the Buhari Transition Committee. 

He is currently the National co-ordinator of Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NAGB), the umbrella body for Agriculture in Nigeria. 


Mr. Ijewere, in this short interview speaks on how the prices of food items in the market can come down. He advocates the active participation of local governments in the agriculture sector in order to build trust and confidence between farmers and primary buyers of farm produce. 

Mr. Emmanuel Ijewere

A lot of the factors that are responsible for the rise in food prices revolve around logistics. The logistics I am referring to can be categorized as either mild or severe. The severe ones relate to the way crops are harvested and stored by farmers in this country while the mild logistics refer to the cost of transportation from remote farms to collection centres.

These two represent a substantial portion of the final price paid by the consumer. In fact, the farmer does not benefit from the high prices of foodstuffs in the market. What needs to be done is for the government to introduce palliative measures and this can only be done at the local government level. Local governments in the country need to show interest in the farmers within their areas.

The problems facing farmers are so complex that they are better addressed at the local government level. Even the state governments are handicapped because they do not know the farmers as well as the local government officials. So if we can begin to see pro-active local government officials that can relate to farmers in a positive way then those little problems can be resolved.

People also talk about the big ones – macro-economic challenges – like bad roads and I do not argue that they are there. But before we get to the stage of transportation, a lot of inefficiencies exist in the system at the micro level. These are my observations from working closely with farmers. Many of the farmers need training but they do not have training

The losses that arise as a result of inefficiencies in harvesting and storage are far more severe than losses suffered during movement of the goods.

Government is paying serious attention to these challenges and it is a welcome development but farmers also have a role to play in bringing down the prices of foodstuffs in our markets. The farmers are scattered all over but they need to come together in clusters or groups within their respective geographical areas based on the crops they cultivate.

This is why I am advocating the involvement of the local government. Many of the farmers are not educated. They are not sophisticated and lack access to better ways of doing things. But if they can come together under a local government product by product, it becomes easier to create an efficient and sustainable way of having uptakers who will then link up with the farmers.

There are a lot of people who want to buy the goods but they cannot afford to visit 200 farmers separately in order to buy the quantity they need. The farmers are far apart and they are not organized. The local governments are in the best position to fill the gap. The uptakers will have more confidence in the local government with which they can sign agreements.

There is a lot of distrust between farmers and various buyers in this country but with the intervention of local governments, prices and other logistics can be easily agreed and food prices will come down in the market.